


Three Nights on the Farm

by Northern_Lady



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sarcasm, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 13:32:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6471919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_Lady/pseuds/Northern_Lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark is having a bad day. If it isn't bad enough that Pepper is leaving to be with Happy, he has to go and crash on some farm in the middle of nowhere and is met by a shotgun wielding hillbilly woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Tony couldn’t quite believe it was over. Pepper was leaving him to get married. And to marry Happy Hogan of all people? When had that even happened? He was still reeling from it all. He couldn’t fly away fast enough. 

“Mr Stark, your power reserves are getting rather low.” Jarvis interrupted his jumbled thoughts. 

“They can’t be getting low Jarvis. I’ve only been flying less than an hour.” Tony protested. 

“I realize that Mr Stark. However, there seems to be some sort of malfunction. You need to land in the next two minutes or you will crash.” Jarvis said. 

Tony scanned the ground below him. It was a rural area. Mostly farms and fields below him. He was looking for a stand of trees where he wouldn’t be seen making a landing. 

“I’m afraid I must recalculate Mr Stark. The power will actually be gone in….” Jarvis faded out and at the moment Tony felt the drain in power. He was crashing. Definitely crashing. 

There was very little Tony could do to slow his fall. He hit the top of the pine tree he’d been aiming for and broke most of the branches on his way down. Then he went tumbling along the ground at the base of the tree and came to a stop. 

“Okay. Well, I’m alive at least.” He said after a moment. Jarvis made no reply. The suit was truly drained of power. 

Tony got to his feet to take a look around. He heard footsteps coming from somewhere behind him. He turned to find a petite brown haired woman aiming a shotgun at him. 

“Who are you and what are you doing on my land?” She said with a slight southern accent. 

“I’m just a passerby. I crashed here.” Tony said, putting his hands up to show goodwill. 

“A passerby, what? Are you some sort of alien?” She asked. 

“I’m Iron Man. Don’t you watch the news?” He asked. 

“I don’t have time for the news. I have a farm to run. You need to leave.” She said firmly. 

“Gladly. I just need you to point the way.” He said. 

“That way.” She pointed to her left still shouldering the gun.” There’s a highway two miles that way.” 

“Fine.” Tony took a step in that direction and then doubled over with pain. He hadn’t realized that his suit had come open on impact. There was a pine branch stabbed directly into his leg. Adrenaline had kept him from feeling the pain until now. He stopped moving and looked down at his leg. 

“I want you the hell off my property, Metal Man!” The woman shouted at him. 

“Yeah, well that’s gonna be a problem.” He said. He realized he was rapidly losing blood. Tony took two steps before he collapsed to the ground. 

Tony woke up in a strange bed and a room he’d never seen before. It seemed to be a farmhouse bedroom. At least that’s what he was guessing based on the floral wallpaper, the frilly curtains, the rustic style bed, and the ax hanging on the wall. He could see that his suit had been somehow disassembled and was lying in pieces in a heap on the floor. He tried to move and get himself out of the strange bed but succeeded only in a cry of pain. He threw back the covers on the bed to get a look at his leg. He was wearing athletic pants that were unbuttoned down one side and his t-shirt. The wound on his leg had been stitched closed, and stitched very expertly by the looks of it. He looked up to see movement through the open door. The woman he’d met in the woods was coming back to him. 

She leaned against the doorframe and stood there wiping her hands on a towel. Up closer she was actually kinda pretty. Blue eyes, brown hair in a single long braid, freckles on her nose, blue jeans, work boots, and a hippie blouse, she was shorter than the kind of women he used to go for but she was pretty nonetheless. “You’re awake.” She said, with the same southern drawl she’d had before. 

“Apparently I am. Kind of surprising since I passed out from blood loss and you couldn’t be bothered to call an ambulance.” He said. 

“Ambulance takes twenty eight minutes to get all the way out here. My way was faster.” She said. 

“No, your way was stupid. Maybe you stitched me up wrong, I could still have splinters in my leg. I could die of gangrene.” He said. 

“You ain’t got any splinters in your damn leg.” She said. She left the doorway and came back moments later with a picture frame in her hand. She walked over to the bed and tossed the frame onto his lap rather roughly. 

He looked down at the framed certificate in front of him. “Harvard Medical School…Commonwealth of Massachusetts….Annabeth Curtis... blah blah blah….degree…. Medical Doctorate….is this supposed to be you?” Tony asked looking up at her, unimpressed.

“No, I just keep a fake medical degree hanging on my wall because it’s looks good next to the axe and the tractor.” She said angrily ripping the frame out of his hand. 

“Okay, so you’re a doctor.” Tony said. “Sorry.” 

“I was a doctor.” Annabeth said much more gently than her earlier tone.

“That makes me feel so much better.” Tony said. “I hope you only lost your licence for fraud and not for incompetence.” 

“Neither one. I had...I have a substance abuse problem.” She tells him. “It doesn’t mean I can’t manage a few stitches. You’ll be fine” 

“I think I’ll go check with a doctor who can still legally practice medicine before I take your word for it. Speaking of that, can I use your phone?” Tony asked. 

“You can use it but no one’s gonna be able to get here and pick you up for a couple days. Storm’s coming. The roads in and out of here are already shit enough even without the snow.” Annabeth said. She brought him the phone anyway and left him alone to make his calls. 

“I guess you were right.” Tony said when she came back for her phone. “No one’s coming out here until the storm blows over.” 

Annabeth shrugged as if to say -I told you so-. “I guess you’re stuck here...I didn’t get your name before. I’m sure it ain’t actually Iron Man.” 

“It’s Tony Stark. If I stay here what’s to stop you from getting that gun out again?” 

“Nothing.” She said. “So I suggest you behave yourself.” 

Annabeth left the room abruptly and came back with a tray of food. She passed it to Tony without a word and left again. He looked down and found that she’d given him beef stew, a roll, a glass of water, and two chocolate chip cookies. On his third bite, Annabeth stuck her head back in the door. 

“I have to go out to the barn and take care of some things.” She told him. “If you hear a gunshot, just ignore it.” And then she was gone again. 

Tony finished his meal and then he managed to drag himself out of bed so that he could take a look around the place. It wasn’t easy to walk but he managed it. Everything he saw looked like a typical farmhouse. There was antique furniture, well worn wooden floorboards, an old wood cook stove in the kitchen not far from a more modern oven and older refrigerator. In the living room he found pictures on the wall. They were family photos of Annabeth with a blonde man and a little brown haired boy who looked very much like her. There was no evidence of any kids here. No toys in any of the rooms. Whatever happened to the little boy, he definitely did not live here. Maybe Annabeth was divorced. Then Tony saw her wedding photo. She probably wouldn’t leave that hanging if she were divorced. Which most likely meant that her family was dead. It wasn’t difficult to put the rest of the story together. Her substance abuse problem had probably developed after her family died. She lost her medical license and then...bought a farm? No, she was a Harvard graduate. She could have found other employment even without a medical license. And she was far too comfortable in this environment for this place to be anything other than the family farm. 

Tony was a little startled when he heard the gunshot that Annabeth had warned him about. Everything went quiet after that. Annabeth didn’t come back to the house. He thought about going out to check on her but didn’t really want to risk getting shot at himself. Besides this was a farm. These farmer types shoot things all the time. She would be fine. He went back to the bedroom and took a look at his disassembled suit on the floor. It wasn’t just disassembled. It looked like it had been torn apart. In a couple places he could see what looked to be a large hand shape worn into the metal. None of that made any sense. He got into bed and soon fell asleep. 

He woke several hours later to the sound of the screen door slamming shut. A light switched on in the dining room just outside his room. He caught a glimpse of Annabeth as she dropped something very large in a heap on top of the dining room table. It was then that he noticed she wore an apron that was covered in blood. She had blood on her hands up to her elbows and more blood streaked on her face. It took him a moment to understand that she’d dropped an armload of meat on the table. She had gotten out a knife and was struggling to separate some of the bones. 

“Do you want some help with that?” Tony asked, getting out of bed. 

“Do I look like I need help?” She said. 

“I wouldn’t know. That’s why I asked.” He said. 

Without a word, she passed him a knife. “Cut here.” She pointed at the place she’d been trying to saw through. 

“This doesn’t seem like a very good butchering table. I take it this doesn’t happen often?” He asked. 

“No. One of my idiot neighbors has a barbed wire fence. My cow got out and got tangled in his fence. I was out there trying to get her free when you showed up. Your crash scared her so much she got herself free and ran back to the barn. I was hoping I could just stitch her up but she was too far gone.” Annabeth explained. 

“There’s something I don’t understand about what happened here. So the cow gets out, I crash, cow runs away, I pass out, how did I get back here in your house? You can’t have carried me…” Tony asked her. 

“My neighbor did that.” She said. “He was already out there yelling at me about the cow breaking down his damn fence.” 

“Your neighbor carried 400 pounds across a field?” Tony asked, not quite believing this story. “I suppose he was the one who tore my suit off?” 

“Chuck isn’t quite normal. He’s stronger than anyone has a right to be and he has some shady dealings going on off his property. That’s why I brought the gun. He only agreed to carry you and get you out of that metal suit because I promised him...well, it’s better if you don’t know what I promised him.” Annabeth said. 

“I hope it was something legal.” Tony said, moving on to the next cut of meat. 

“It would have been legal if they hadn’t taken away my medical license.” She said. 

“Couldn’t you just give him money instead? I mean I have money and that would be less complicated than doing something illegal.” Tony suggested. He didn’t like that his crash had caused her so much trouble. Ordinarily he wouldn’t care or he’d at least pretend not to care but he had been losing a lot of blood. She had very likely saved his life.

“No one backs out of a deal with Chuck.” She said warily. She actually looked rather shaken at the thought. She went to the sink, washed the blood off her arms and hands. Then she opened a nearby cabinet and took out a bottle of whiskey and a glass. 

“Is that your substance?” He asked, referring to her substance abuse problem. 

“One of them.” She said, downing the drink. “Daddy left a collection of brandy in the cellar but I don’t take those out very often.” She said. 

So he had been right. This was the family farm. She drank a second glass of whiskey and then she set to work wrapping cuts of meat in wax paper and carrying them to the freezer. After an hour on his feet Tony was soon growing tired. He had just ended a relationship, crashed into a tree, and passed out from blood loss all on the same day, after all. 

“You should go to bed.” Annabeth said. “I’ll finish this.” 

He took her advice and went back to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony awoke the next morning to the sound of a rooster crowing. He was still tired. He didn’t want to move, probably couldn’t move even if he did want to. He pulled the blanket back over his head and tried to keep out the sunlight that was streaming in the window. Then he heard the screen door slam shut. Annabeth was in the dining room. She put a basket of eggs on the table which was now cleared of blood. Then she went back and shut the front door. Tony dragged himself out of bed and leaned against the doorway to keep from falling. 

“Do you ever sleep?” He asked her as she shook the snow off of her coat and hung it on a hook nearby. 

“I got in a few hours.” She shrugged. “Storm is here.” 

“I kinda guessed that from looking out the window.” He said. Then he noticed the empty bottle of whiskey on the counter. She must have finished it off. 

“Hey, at least I don’t try to drive when I drink that stuff.” She said, noting the direction of his gaze. “I’m not hurting anyone else.” 

“You must have hurt someone sometime though, or you’d still be a doctor.” He said. 

She swallowed, angry. “I shouldn’t have ever told you.” She said, and she went to her cabinet and took out another bottle of whiskey. 

He thought about suggesting she put it away but decided it wasn’t any of his business. She poured herself a glass and took a sip. She was only interested in drinking and here he was starving. “Do you mind if I cook some of those eggs?” 

“Help yourself.” She said. 

Tony cooked enough for himself and for Annabeth. She barely ate. She picked at her food and prefered her drink instead. He was just finishing up the food on his plate when they heard someone knocking at the door. 

“Doctor Keller! Doctor Keller!” A man’s voice was shouting outside the door. Annabeth got up quickly and opened the door. The man at the door was carrying a little girl of about eight or nine years of age. She was unconscious and bleeding from her neck. 

“Put her on the table!” Annabeth said at first glance. Tony cleared the plates out of the way as the man carried the girl over. 

“Mikey and Willow were messing around jumping fences ‘stead of feeding the chickens this morning like they shoulda been. Mikey dared her to try a pole vault over Chuck’s fence… and…” The farmer said. 

“And she couldn’t make the jump.” Annabeth finished for him. “That fence of Chuck’s is gonna get someone killed!” Annabeth was already washing her hands so that she could tend to Willow. 

“Can you help her?” The farmer asked. 

“Of course I can Frank. Just fetch me my bag from the living room.” Annabeth said. 

Tony watched as Annabeth expertly tended to the little girl’s injury, washing the cut, stitching it shut. 

“Why isn’t she awake yet?” Frank asked. “Did she lose too much blood?”

“From this size cut, I doubt it.. She probably just got scared and fainted.” Annabeth said. “Lets try waking her up.” 

“Willow?” Frank said, shaking the girl gently. Annabeth applied a wet cloth to her forehead. 

The girl opened her eyes. “Daddy?” 

Frank picked up his daughter and hugged her tight. “I’m glad you’re alright darlin’” He said. 

Something about the scene before her brought tears to Annabeth’s eyes. She brushed them away and her jaw tightened with anger. 

“How much do we owe you doc?” Frank asked. 

Annabeth shook her head. “I can’t take your money Frank. If I did it would count as practicing medicine and we both know I can’t do that.” She said with half a smile. 

“Then I’ll send Mikey over with a few jars of jam and maple syrup as soon as the storm is over.” Frank said. 

“That will be just fine.” She said, with a nod. Frank zipped his jacket with his daughter still cradled against him and he went back out into the storm. As soon as they were gone Annabeth lost all her composure. She burst into tears. She bit her lip to hold back the sobs but it wasn’t enough. She grabbed her bottle of whiskey from the kitchen counter and started gulping it down straight from the bottle. It was too much. She put the bottle down, coughing and sputtering and she fled the room. 

Tony wasn’t sure what to do. He barely knew this woman. He could hear her sobbing in another room nearby though the sound was muffled probably by a pillow. If he had to guess, he would say that the sight of her neighbor getting his daughter back safely was only a reminder of the son that Annabeth would never see again. There wasn’t anything he could say that would help her with that. Maybe he could just distract her by keeping her talking. It was worth a try. He gave her a few minutes to calm herself and then he went into the living room. Annabeth was curled up on the sofa hugging her knees and a pillow. Tony sat in a nearby rocking chair. 

“So your neighbor Frank, he called you Doctor Keller? Your degree said Annabeth Curtis?” He said, his gaze stopping on her wedding photo. 

“Yeah, I was married, and I had a son. I’m sure you saw the pictures.” She said, her voice raw. 

“Do you mind if I ask what happened?” Tony asked. This wasn’t going to distract her but it would satisfy his curiosity. 

“My husband Will, and our son Austin and I all came back here to visit Dad for Christmas two years ago. We were here a week before Christmas. Austin spent a lot of that time playing outside. He didn’t get to do that back at our apartment in the city…I don’t know exactly what happened. Dad and I had gone into town to get cranberry sauce and I got a text message from Will. It said come home now, something terrible had happened...Near as I can tell, Austin saw something he wasn’t meant to see. Whatever he saw it was on Chuck’s side of the fence...I only know that cause of the blood we found in the snow on his property… but Will and Austin were dead on the front porch when Dad and I got back...the police can’t solve it...I don’t know what they saw...I only know that Chuck ain't normal and that a lot of big trucks come in and out of his farm...a lot more than a soy farmer could ever need…” Annabeth said. 

“So you went back to practice medicine after that?” He asked her. 

“I did, until I left a sponge inside someone during a surgery.” She said bitterly. “It’s happened to doctors who were sober before. But the timing was right anyway because my Dad got sick and he needed my help. He only lasted another year after that…..you know I looked you up on the internet after you told me your name?” 

“Yeah well, I wouldn’t believe everything you read about me there.” Tony said. 

“What would it take for you to fix your suit?” She asked. 

“Tools. Power. Why?” Toned asked. 

“Because I don’t think I can do what Chuck wanted me to do and if I back out, he’s gonna kill me. I need your help.” Annabeth said, and she worriedly waited for his answer.


End file.
